


Fan Stats on Fledgling Fandoms on AO3 - November 2020

by autocartograph



Category: 30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい | 30-sai Made Doutei da to Mahou Tsukai ni Nareru Rashii (TV), Blood of Zeus (Cartoon), Fandom - Fandom, The Queen's Gambit (TV), แปลรักฉันด้วยใจเธอ | I Told Sunset About You (TV)
Genre: AO3 Tags - Freeform, Fandom Analytics, Fandom Statistics, Originally Posted on Tumblr, new fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autocartograph/pseuds/autocartograph
Summary: Some analytics on four new fandoms on AO3 as of November 2020.Originally posted onTumblr.Note: I'm not in these fandoms so I welcome comments and corrections from the fans who are.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	Fan Stats on Fledgling Fandoms on AO3 - November 2020

Big, established fandoms got you down (not naming names...)? Or maybe you are looking for the next shiny thing? 

Might I interest you in [The Queen’s Gambit,](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/The%20Queen's%20Gambit%20\(TV\)/works) [Blood of Zeus](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Blood%20of%20Zeus%20\(Cartoon\)/works), 30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい | [30-sai Made Doutei da to Mahou Tsukai ni Nareru Rashii](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/30%E6%AD%B3%E3%81%BE%E3%81%A7%E7%AB%A5%E8%B2%9E%E3%81%A0%E3%81%A8%E9%AD%94%E6%B3%95%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%84%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B%E3%82%89%E3%81%97%E3%81%84%20%7C%2030-sai%20Made%20Doutei%20da%20to%20Mahou%20Tsukai%20ni%20Nareru%20Rashii%20\(TV\)/works), and [แปลรักฉันด้วยใจเธอ | I Told Sunset About You](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%89%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%94%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%A2%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%88%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%AD%20%7C%20I%20Told%20Sunset%20About%20You%20\(TV\)/works).

  


These are all fandoms that have recently shown up as new fandoms on [AO3′s fandom lists](https://archiveofourown.org/media/TV%20Shows/fandoms) within the last 30 days, have between 25 and 200 works, and have grown by more than 5% in the last 7 days.

  


As AO3 crosses the 40,000 fandom mark, I was curious about what the newest additions can teach us [(dashboard here](https://datastudio.google.com/s/mO-NZTX5Gg4)). Mega-fandoms get the lion’s share of attention, but what is it like in nascent fandoms? 

* * *

## First off, AO3 is currently adding new fandoms at a rate of 15 per day. So why **_these_** 4? 

A couple of reasons. The last 30 days seem like a nice round number to start with (and I don’t have data before mid-October). That’s 572 new fandoms. But not all of those sprung up in the last 30 days. Most have been around for a while and are just now getting tag-wrangled and need to be verified by hand. So I narrowed the list down further to avoid the tiniest fandoms (<25) as well as the biggest (200+ as they are the most likely to have been around a while and are getting tag adjustments.) Similarly, 5%+ growth helps to filter out fandoms that aren’t actually growing. [Doing this creates a shorter list](https://datastudio.google.com/s/mO-NZTX5Gg4). From there I went through by hand and picked out the ones that didn’t have works prior to the last 30 days. The process itself isn’t an exact science because of the vagaries of tag wrangling and how works get updated.

## What do we know about these 4?

(Standard pan-fandom discussion disclaimer: I’m not in any of these fandoms, so I’m counting on fans to help me out when I misstep.)

All are TV shows that began airing in October. Two on Netflix. One cartoon. Two live-action based on books (manga and novel). One Japanese, one Thai, two English language. Two slash romance. A mixture of genres. Some were released all at once, some have finished their seasons, some are still being aired.

 _ **Growing at different rates.  
**_ I Told Sunset About You (ITSAY) is slow and steady, averaging a little over one new work a day (1.2 wpd). Blood of Zeus is slightly higher at 1.7 wpd, and Cherry Magic slightly higher still at 2.2 wpd. Queen’s Gambit is growing over twice that at an average rate of 4.6 works per day (wpd). 

[It’s probably more accurate to think of a fandom’s total works count as a measure of volume than new works. So if the count has increased by five in a day, is that because five new works were created? Or maybe six were created and one was removed? Or maybe a work in another fandom suddenly became a crossover? That being said, if the fandom is new and small, new works is probably fairly accurate.]

 ** _More or less linear growth.  
_** It’s hard to gauge what happens in the very first days of a new fandom (as judged by the show's release.) because I’m only tracking when it officially showed up on the fandom list. From what we can see here, Cherry Magic had a slow start but perhaps as the season continued it picked up speed. Queen’s Gambit seems to be following a linear growth curve. ITSAY and Blood of Zeus growth are more ambiguous to classify but seems to have settled into a slow and steady linear growth.

 ** _Only 4 fandoms.  
_** I’m actually a bit surprised by the fact that there are only 4 fandoms on the list for a thirty day period. I supposed it shouldn’t be, given that the vast majority of fandoms are tiny and will stay tiny. It would be interesting to look at the growth curves of all different types of fandoms, and see if we can make generalizations about how fans on AO3 create works for new fandoms.

**_Final Thoughts._ **

  * It would be interesting to look at the growth curves of all different types of fandoms, and see if we can make generalizations about how fans on AO3 create works for new fandoms. At this point, I don’t have enough data, but it is possible to use the AO3 search/filter function on select fandoms.
  * Does the fact that Cherry Magic started as a manga before moving to TV impact work creation? 
  * Is there a relationship between early creators and the early growth of a fandom? For instance, I’m wondering if Blood of Zeus is leveraging fans of Castlevania (same studio for both) for increased growth?
  * What does the network graph look like for all of these fandoms (i.e., what other fandoms do these initial creators create in?)
  * What is the relationship between language and growth? Cherry Magic’s fanworks to date have been a mixture of Mandarin and English despite the show being in Japanese, while the other three's fanworks have been primarily in English despite ITSAY being in Mandarin and Thai.
  * It would be interesting to see word clouds or patterns in tagging for early fandoms vs more established ones to see if there are differences/similarities.




End file.
